Industrial machines, such as dozers, motor graders, wheel loaders, and other types of heavy equipment are used to perform a variety of tasks. In the performance of these tasks, the machine may be involved in an accident event. For example, the machine may collide with an object, rollover, become stuck, or be rendered inoperable. When under the direct control of a human operator, accident events may be anticipated by the operator with sufficient time to implement appropriate avoidance measures. However, in some situations the risk of an accident may be difficult for the operator to identify, anticipate, and/or avoid. The potential for an accident may be even greater when the machine is controlled remotely or autonomously without a human operator located on-board the machine, as computer systems may not be as equipped to adapt to their surroundings as a human operator.
In some machines, collision warning systems may be employed to warn an operator or a machine controller of a risk of an accident event. However, such systems may not possess the capability to identify potential accident event causes of the work environment and record machine parameters for a time period after identification of the potential accident event. Data collection from the time period associated with an accident event may help identify machine behavior that may be characteristic of an imminent accident event. Such data may be used to adaptively improve collision warning systems and operator training systems. Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for collecting and logging data associated with an accident event, upon detection of a triggering event indicative of an accident.
A vehicle accident recording system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,093 (the '093 patent) issued to Kikinis on Sep. 29, 1998. The vehicle accident recording system of the '093 patent employs a digital camera connected to a controller, a non-volatile memory, and an accident-sensing interrupter. Vehicle data is sampled and recorded at the same time as each sampled image from the digital camera. Vehicle data may be stored along with the sampled images in sectors of flash memory. The flash memory may be recorded to a permanent memory in the event of a collision. On detection of an accident by impact, deceleration, or rollover sensors, one additional data sample is collected before recording is stopped. The flash memory or permanent memory may be downloaded to another device.
Although the system of the '093 patent may record vehicle data and images from a digital camera, it may not be able to continue to record data after a collision, in a meaningful way. Therefore, it may not be effective in the analysis of post-collision events, such as operator reactions to the collision, secondary collisions, etc. Additionally, the system of the '093 patent may not detect “near misses.” A “near miss” may be an event that, in the time period leading up to the “near miss”, had the potential for resulting in a collision. A “near miss” may be of interest for improving the accuracy of autonomous machine control and operator training in remotely controlled machines.
The disclosed system and method are directed to improvements in the existing technology.